


Inconvenient Moon

by pseudofaux



Category: Samurai Love Ballad: PARTY
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Foiled Plans, Full Moon, Modern AU, Quadrantid meteors, Stargazing, Who needs his life to be more fluffy? MI-TSU-NA-RI!, gift for a person who is good people, hilltop date, old-school date planning, one shot one act one and done, snuggles, things go awry/turn out pretty great
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 11:49:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13053420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudofaux/pseuds/pseudofaux
Summary: The moon is beautiful, but it's really cutting into this date. Mitsunari fluff (y'all don't tell anyone I took a smut break okay? STANDARDS).





	Inconvenient Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mrs Otome (Hollywithaneye)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hollywithaneye/gifts).



> Mrs. O is a gift to us all and this is a gift to her. <3

Atop the hill, the view of the night sky was nothing short of magnificent. Every star gleamed as though polished. The clouds you had been fretting over all day had been swept away by afternoon breezes. So you could see all of those glorious stars.

And the moon.

…Which was a problem.

The man you loved made a little  _tch_.

“You know moon phases are cyclical, right? And basic Googling might have revealed tonight’s full moon to you?”

He was right, of course. Even after you confessed where you were taking him on your drive here, you had fretted over the way the moon was so very… large. On the drive out of the city, up and away from ambient light. Towards moonlight, which pretty much ruined your plans to surprise him with meteor shower viewing. There wasn’t much you could do about the moon, but you felt so glum and guilty you showed your hand before you could stop yourself.

“Yes,“ you sighed. “After I saw a headline about the meteor shower a few weeks ago, I wanted to… do this… analog,” you said hopelessly. “You rag me all the time for relying on my phone; I wanted to put this together for us with books and charts and then talk with you about it while we were up here watching the Quadrantid meteors.”

_And making wishes._ But you’d said quite enough.

Mitsunari went quiet, stretched out beside your sitting form on the blanket you used for picnics (and poorly-planned meteor shower trips, apparently) with his arms behind his head.

His quiet could still unnerve you. But when the quiet held, you braved a glance over at his face. His mouth was turned up in his tiny, tiny smile.

_That_ one.

You would go to hell and back for that smile. And sometimes felt you did.

You loved it so much you would even look away from it, so he wouldn’t feel the pressure of your eyes and stop. Your hands fretted at the corner of the folder holding the star charts and information on the meteor shower. And then you were looking at him again—dammit, he was so pleasant to look at—and saw him relax further onto his arms, eyes moving about as he took in the sky.

“It is an acceptable night for stargazing,” he murmured, so quietly that had you not been focused on his face you might not have been able to make out what he said. “If you insist.”

Oh, Mitsun.

You could feel your lower lip quivering, and the sudden hot, terrible feeling of tears about to spill over. He was sweet when it counted.

“Hey!” he said, suddenly. “What?! I said we could stay!”

“I know!” you said, voice thick with that stupid, unstoppable tremble that preceded a cry, “I’m happy.”

He rolled his eyes and muttered something about your ridiculousness. The remark would have cut if his blush wasn’t so visible. But since you knew the blotch (how could a person even make a blotch elegant?) of red high on his cheek and the firm set of his mouth even better than the little smile you’d been graced with a moment ago, you held your tongue.

You discarded the folder of information on meteors you wouldn’t be able to see in the moonlight. You rubbed at your eyes with your sleeves, and moved to lay on the blanket yourself. For now you were on your own back, hands folded over your stomach. You told yourself not to get greedy, but knew that if you did somehow manage to see a shooting star, you’d wish for cuddles. Just this once, something movie-romantic.

Mitsunari sighed again. He moved his arm to point at something and you admired his slim, strong fingers. You tried not to think about what they had done to you the night before, but then of course you were, and feeling very warm…

The hiss of his voice broke through your happy memories.

“I asked if you could see the belt, you goose.”

Your eyes immediately looked in the direction he was pointing. You told him that you could.

“Orion,” you murmured. It was so easy to see in the winter. Even with the moon. Stupid moon.

He nodded and moved his finger slightly down.

“The bright star below it is Rigel.”

You squinted and shuffled closer. “Hanging from the belt, or the lower one?”

“Lower,” he said, gentler now that he had your attention.

“It’s pretty,” you observed. “Very bright.”

His quiet snort of amusement made you smile. You had so many conversations behind you about beauty as a virtue of its own that it was practically a joke.

“What do you know about Rigel?” he asked.

“Nothing,” you had to confess.

Stars, and of course the inconvenient moon, filled the sky. Even without meteors, it really was a good night to stargaze. Before you could tell him he’d been right, Mitsunari asked quietly, “Do you want me to tell you about it?”

“Mmhmm,” you said immediately, snuggling up to him without asking for permission. He huffed another little laugh into your hair and you heard “shameless” tucked between other words you couldn’t make out. The tone of it all was so bemused and loving you didn’t really need to hear the rest. Your heart was happy just like this.

Mitsunari pressed your free hand gently to his chest. Your heart stayed happy but your fingers grew greedy and itched to toy with the line of his button up. Since you knew how poorly that would go over outside the house, even alone on a quiet hilltop, you settled against him.

He told you about the Genpei War, and how the Minamoto took Rigel for a symbol and the Taira took Betelgeuse.

The history was interesting, the sound of his voice and lines of his body soothing. When he seemed to be finished, you looked up at him from his chest.

Mitsunari really put the night sky to shame, the blue-black gloss of his hair even more pleasant to take in than the sky. His tiny beauty mark like a star on his face, the colors inverted. That face more luminous and more beautiful than the moon. And far less inconvenient. Most of the time.

“What’s that ridiculous smile for?” he asked. There wasn’t any bite in it.

“You’re beautiful,” you said simply. “Thank you for telling me about the stars.”

He frowned and his eyes zipped away, but there was that color on his cheeks again. Since he had been so nice to you on this misadventure you decided not to tease him, and settled your own cheek back onto his chest.

“What you mentioned earlier is the Orion Nebula,” he said tentatively after a few minutes. You smiled.

He kept talking.

You kept loving him.

You didn’t see a single shooting star; the brightness of the moon made it impossible.

It was still a wonderful night.

**Author's Note:**

> Quadrantid Meteors are real, and they "fall" in January. In 2018, the peak time for the meteor shower coincides with a large, bright moon, which means unfortunately it will be hard to see them even if other conditions (like clear skies, as in this story) are optimal. Shame! You can read more about them at  
> [EarthSky](http://earthsky.org/?p=155137), always a great place to nerd out. :) More about the Genpei War [here](https://www.ancient.eu/Genpei_War/), and some nice information on Orion (way more than I knew when I started writing!) [here](https://oneminuteastronomer.com/2574/constellation-orion-2/).


End file.
